That will help with the design aspect. But what about quality? Take Ford: probably the only semi-reliable vehicle that Ford builds is the Mustang. The rest are just junk compared to the Japanese. They're always going to be just surviving until they get serious about this imo...
The big 3 are done for by the end of 2008, IMO. Gas is already $3.00 in California, and its still winter. By 4th of July demand will be up and so will the price. $3.50 or $4.00? How many SUV's and other guzzlers will they sell with gas up there? Remember 1979 when Chrysler had lot after lot of unsold 1978 V8's everywhere? Given their lack of anything desirable that gets decent fuel economy, i think they collectively go off a cliff this year sales wise. 100,000 Camaros? They were selling 100,000 F-Body's before and discontinued it for lack of sales. The quantity is nothing to them. With the high power, low fuel economy motors they'll put in it it will only last a couple years at most. I love my F-Body's, but 33 mpg is about the best they are going to do in stock trim. They could modify it to get 39 out of it on the road, but they are looking for performance and minimized warranty cost, not fuel economy. What they need to be doing is building the Volt in 12 months from the day of that Auto show, and get to where they are paying the same for wages and benefits as their competitors. Its no big deal if the Volt can initially only go 20 mi on batteries instead of 40, or gets 100 mpg instead of 150. They need to just build it while they have anything at all left. If it flops, at least they will have gone down trying. Otherwise they'll be done, IMO. PS: You watch. By 2008 they'll be bringing in cars from China. with wages there at 3% of American wages, how long can we compete?
I went to the Toronto auto show a few weeks ago... GM had some interesting cars, mostly fuel efficient small cars... Ford on the other hand... well, they had huge steel dinosaurs... I don't think either one of them has a shot against TOM in the long run... but if I had to choose between the two... looks like GM is going to be around longer...
Well, perhaps a bit of an overstatement (or maybe you were speaking euphemistically), but it's true enough that there are a lot of people who simply can't conceive of the big three ceasing to exist (and this could include just getting swallowed up by the Japanese/whomever). I take a longer view and say that the bankruptcy of one of the big three within 10 years would not be a total shock. btw... is that accurate about wages for the average industrial worker in China being 3% of the US numbers? 3%?
That'll be some fight...a 4' 9" wrinkled 900 year old Japanese man kicking the shit out of a 400 lbs obese smoking gorilla....something funny to watch at least.
Ford has been making the ugliest cars for years....Chevy's cars at least have some sex appeal. The best Ford has done is with the Mustang which I've not seen too many of on the road...I hear they're bringing back the Taurus though which was hugely successful for them...probably not anymore. Toyota and Honda(or Lexus/Acura) are the cars to buy for middle-class people...they're so freaking nice compared to the domestics...everytime I rent a car it's agony knowing that I'm going to get stuck with some huge piece of shit domestic with cramped interior and heinously mangled exterior design. No contest...Toyota and Honda deserve to win this one.
GM has enormous problems, but don't fall into the trap of underestimating GM's globalization efforts in introducing economies of scale and eliminating redundancies, and don't buy too deeply into the myth of Toyota as invincible. I would not have said this two years ago, or maybe even last year, but GM has finally at least awoken from its 27 year snooze. When you see the new product pipeline GM will roll out over the next 24 months, you will see objective and substantial leaps forward in quality, functionality and styling.
The thing with Ford is that if you look under the hood of any of their cars you'll see 40 year old technology... very inefficient... The weird thing is that they have better technologies like the one's the use in Volvo and Jaguar, but somehow those don't seem to make it back to the fords... These is where where TOM and GM is got the upper hand, they're looking foward, focusing on small, fuel efficient vehicles... Now TOM has the advantage on not having the syndicates leaches sucking on it's throat like GM and F... If GM manages to dissolve the syndicate and fire all those lazy ass overpaid factory workers they might have a shot. [Toyota's cars aren't build in China, they're build in the US, paying decent salaries to their workers ]
I wouldn't think of buying a GM or Ford for a second unless it was a truck as Toyota's trucks are quite a few bucks more...I bought a Ford a few years ago for about 6 months of use and sold it...didn't pay much and didn't sell it for much either. It would take one hell of a deal for me to buy something other than a Toyota/Lexus or Honda/Acura because I have had nothing but good experiences with them and like I said in an earlier post, I loathe getting stuck with GMs and Fords when renting.